Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Earlier today I spoke about the situation in Trout Lake where people can’t see the visiting doctor unless they have an appointment. As we are learning, this is not the only community that this is happening in.
Is the Minister willing to review the practice of turning away small community residents who do not have prior appointments with this visiting physician? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Menicoche. The honourable Minister of Health and Social Services, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Yes, I would be willing to have the authorities review that. The reason that we have the system that we do where the health authorities are at the regional level and work closely with the communities, so that they understand the communities, the culture of the communities and so on. If this is happening, it shouldn’t be happening. Individuals will not be turned away from seeing the doctor if there are appointments available. Of course, when you have more than one individual showing up at the same time slot, it would be difficult, but we will do our best to allocate the time slots for individuals that come in to drop in to see the doctor when the doctors are in the communities. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
That is part of the issue. The doctors are flying in and flying out and sometimes, if there is a weather system moving in, they are leaving early. I believe that they can expand their time in the community. In fact, communities welcome doctors overnighting.
Can the Minister review that and see if there is a possibility of doctors overnighting and doing a good visit through the communities? After all, they are only going there every six weeks. Thank you.
We will have the department work to see those various health authorities and ensure that if doctors are needed overnight, if they have more than just one day worth of appointments when they go into a place like Nahanni Butte, Trout Lake or any of those small communities that have too many appointments for one day. I’m not expecting that the doctor would leave a community – I’m sure the community can accommodate the doctor overnight – and will ensure that doctors that go into the community are prepared to stay overnight. Thank you.
Thank you very much. I think part of the issue, too, is that if the flight returns at 4:30, doctors are packing up and leaving at 4:30. They have to have the flexibility and understand the needs of the community and to stay that extra couple hours or whatever it takes. Thank you.
I agree with that. As I indicated, we will contact the authorities and if doctors need to stay overnight in the small communities, they should. They’ve signed up to work in the small authorities, like the Deh Cho Health and Social Services Authority, they should expect to overnight in the small communities as well. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Menicoche.
Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I think the point is to plan to stay overnight and not just say the workload is so much here, we have to overnight and that. Also, it’s about improving access to the patients’ files. I can understand it if they’re going to see a patient and they don’t have the proper files from the regional headquarters, but spending an extra night gives the opportunity to fax, phone, or hopefully our electronic medical records get up on-line so they can actually request that it be e-mailed. Thank you.
Thank you. We would look at a planned overnight. If a doctor is going into the communities, they can look at the historical appointments in certain communities and if this has become an issue where patients are being turned away from the health centre, but the doctor still leaves on schedule even though they haven’t seen all the patients and that’s the history of that community, then in the future, when doctors go into small communities, they would plan to stay overnight.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Sahtu, Mr. Yakeleya.
